Open Source

NoFlo Champions Flow-Based Programming

By Adrian Bridgwater, August 07, 2013

Founder claims coding is "messed up"

Flow-based software development company NoFlo is bidding to transform software development from a text-oriented process to a visual object-oriented process. The firm wants developers to be able to see what is happening as a result of code deployed and make changes while a component is running.

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NoFlo is based on "Flow-Based Programming" — with its roots at IBM in the 1970s, flow-based programming has been widely used for the creation of 3D and special effects in movies. Everything in the software development process is always a visual graph. So not just visual for the original design, but every single component is visually connected and can be reordered and reused.

"Every developer knows code is messed up: programming today is like navigating the subway system without a map; only those who created it can get where they want to go. Every new line of software causes an additional element of pain, as well as unintended consequence and disorganization. Because of this, adding simple features can take months, spawn new bugs, and mess up days and weeks of work," claims Henri Bergius, founder of NoFlo.

"Flow-based programming allows you to see what's going on, see every component of the application and how they're connected. With NoFlo, you can look at a screen, see how the software is progressing, spot and isolate flaws, and correct them without halting the flow of the whole development," he added.

NoFlo aims to build the first mainstream visual development environment for flow-based programming. Since NoFlo is already available for JavaScript development, the addition of Java and Objective-C will enable the creation of native apps for iOS and Android as well as popular browsers and Node.js servers.

NoFlo's hosted development environment will feature a user interface, reusable components, and example graphs. 100% of the source code will also be made available as open source.

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